Taking to the cloud is no easy task.
It takes a sharp understanding of your environment, access to the right skills, and knowing where (and how) to start.
According to Gartner, global cloud spend is also set to reach over £400 billion by the end of 2022. This means that more and more businesses are investing into the amassing potential of the cloud.
With all of the buy-in, it’s important to shed some light on cloud migration with Senior Cloud Architect, Brendon De Meyer.
Join him as he answers some of the most burning questions businesses face.
When should I start my cloud migration?
When you thoroughly know your current environment. You’re going to make an expensive mistake if you select the provider and then work backwards.
You need to understand, from a baseline, what infrastructure you are currently running. You need to identify all of your existing pain points and look for technology providers, or hyperscalers, to help you solve those problems.
The key to kicking off a cloud migration well is keeping a clean house on-premise.
It includes making sure that you understand what your current footprint looks like and what’s actually needed, because it’s not a one-to-one. It’s not like-for-like. You’re not going to need as much equipment in the cloud as you do on-prem.
When you want to get started with your cloud migration, forget about cloud, look internally, fix that baseline problem and then start retrofitting the hyperscalers accordingly.
And once you’re ready, you can look at one of the many options for hyperscalers, such as AWS, GCP, Azure and Oracle.
How do I assess what I will need to do a lift and shift?
If you take your infrastructure layer into consideration, everything is capable of a lift and shift.
But you can’t just look at infrastructure.
- You have to look at the application stack from a top-down approach. You shouldn’t be looking at the foundation upwards.
- You have to dissect your application stack and understand your monoliths.
- You have to identify what your existing code base looks like, and where the problems exist, because the infrastructure is guaranteed to work.
Your application stack is where you’re going to run into major problems.
Understand that if it’s running on a deprecated environment on-premise, that it should be doing so for a reason.
The low hanging fruit is often your first 80%. Get the low hanging fruit out of the way. Then you start working on the modernisation process. Sometimes you’re going to have to modernise into the cloud, because not every application will natively lift and shift.
How do I select the right cloud provider or providers?
There are 3 major factors that you should consider when picking a hyperscaler:
The product.
You need to understand what product best solves your problems. Google does certain things better. Microsoft does certain things better. The same applies for AWS and Oracle. If you want SharePoint, get Microsoft. If you want good data analysis, go to Google. And if you want a developer-friendly platform, look at AWS.
What works vs. availability
You need to fine-tune your existing infrastructure. It’s not just about what works. Although it might offer nice greenfields. Keep on eye on what works versus where it’s available, because you a) need to bring your systems closer to your customers and b) you want to make sure that you’re not going to break any data server rules.
What you’re able to support
Look at what you want, where you can get it and how you can support it. Do you need a partner to do this with you? Most of the time, it’s a yes. Organisations that try and tackle this by themselves generally take longer, or never end up getting into the cloud.
It’s also important to remember that you can mix and match cloud providers. There’s no hard and fast rule to pick one provider only.
Egress costs & latency
If your only constraint will be egress costs, be aware that they’re not as pricey as people make them out to be. Double check and make sure that you’re comfortable with egress costs and the latency between different providers.
Expand Your Knowledge on the Cloud
Data is your biggest commodity.
Don’t let a slow, deprecating and risky data architecture affect your ability to innovate and scale. Rather, take the time to consider the unlimited nature and vast capabilities of the cloud and the potential that it presents your organisation.
Learn more about the cloud on our blog! OR how we’re able to take you there.
